We must focus on what God commands of us, and to this end, it is wise to turn to Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra 9-10 and Nehemiah 13 record the Hebrew men returning from exile and taking wives from foreign nations. Nehemiah "contended with them and cursed them, struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, 'You shall not give your daughters as wives to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons or yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things?" The common interpretation is that Christians should not marry non-Christians, yet if we understand such passages as Ezra 10 to condemn only inter-religious marriage, we will be unable to explain God's apparent change of heart in 1 Cor. 7:10-16. Ezra tells the people to divorce their unbelieving wives. Paul tells us not to divorce unbelieving wives. This is a contradiction, unless Ezra protested race-mixing. The goal in view must have been separation from foreign nations (races). Without such separation, the nation of Israel was sure to be corrupted by pagan influences, just as Solomon, the wisest man in the world, was corrupted by his foreign wives. The lesson to be learned is that interracial marriages are wrong because they lead men astray. God does not say that they are wrong if they lead men astray, or that marriage to foreign women is wrong unless the women agree to convert. Deuteronomy 28 tells us the inevitable price of disobedience: "The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail."

"The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail."

Who knew they had xenophobic idiots who feared affirmative action back in Biblical times too?

Both run our congregation. Its very diverse. We go by the King James version and are quite aware of the passages that declare that God is no respector of persons. Race is meaningless. Racists like that will try to delude others about the "mark of Cain" but they are quick to ignore anything that would derail their argument.

Powered by DCForum+ Version 1.1 Copyright 1997-2002 DCScripts.com
Software has been extensively modified by the DU administrators

Important Notices: By participating on this discussion
board, visitors agree to abide by the rules outlined on our Rules
page. Messages posted on the Democratic Underground Discussion Forums are the
opinions of the individuals who post them, and do not necessarily represent
the opinions of Democratic Underground, LLC.